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OBIT: It seems to me Black is forced to make the winning move. He has to stop Qxg7#, and the only reasonable move is 41...g5. Oh, but how nice - 41...g5 also creates a mating threat, so that 42. Bxd5 is met by 42...Qh4#, and if 42. fg Bxe4 43. g7+ Kg8 and wins.

One of my favourite kinds of chess moves are the ones that you put together, piece by piece, as if you are building a wall. Let me illustrate

The first stage is scanning the landscape. Black has to defend against white's mate threats, but he also has threats of his own. Specifically, the white king sitting on h3 has a target tattooed on his forehead along with the words "hit me". A square like h3 is one of the muddiest fringes of the battlefield. A king dressed in his fine robes and shining armour should never dip his toes in the mire of a square like h3.

Yup, it seems like attacking the misplaced white king on h3 looks promising. A good place to build a wall.

Look a little closer and we see that the white king is stalemated. And as we know, the standard plan for a stalemated king is to check, check, check until dead. And that gives us our plan - find a way to check the white king. And now we know what kind of wall we want to build.

But how to give check? We might look at bishop and rook moves and quickly decide that they are too slow. While we are engineering our check, white lands a mate on g7. Ooops. We need to prepare the way for our deadly check. Lay the foundations, you might say.

And eventually we find the first brick - 41...g5, threatening Qh4#. This is where a measure of luck comes in. You might spot this move straight away through a combination of skill, memory, perception and ... perhaps ... a little bit of random good fortune. Or you might get hooked on another move and have to convince yourself that it doesn't work before moving on to 41...g5. An alternative here is 41...Rd7 threatening Bxe4. But it's not nearly so sexy as 41...g5.

But you are not going to build a wall with just one brick. And all we have so far is just "41...g5, threatening Qh4#". Time to examine the white replies.

First, let's look at 42. exf6 (ep). This takes away our queen mate, but it opens up the diagonal to the white king's muddy square. Then we can play 42...Be6+ 43. Bf5 Bxf5+ 44. Qg4 Bxg4. That seems convincing enough.

To recap, our wall now has two bricks:

41...g5, threatening Qh4#
If 42. gxf6 Be6+ wins the house

Then we need to look for other black defences to 41...g5. He could move his queen away, either to give his king an escape square on g2 or to defend the h4 square. So let's look at these in turn. 42. Qg3 and 42 Qg4 both allow us to snaffle the white bishop with either Bxe4 or Qxe4. That's two more bricks for our wall, which currently looks like this:

If you want to be really thorough you would also look at other possible white defences like Qc2 and Qf1, but it doesn't take much to see that white cannot escape loss of material or mate.

Wall complete, our brickie stands back in satisfaction, lights a Marlboro, takes a swig from his mug of workman's tea (strong, lots of milk, three sugars), wolf-whistles a passing young lady, inflates the bill by a good 30% for luck and admires his handiwork.

We are satisfied that the move is safe. We lean forward, play 41...g5 and press the clock. And before we get a chance to write the move down, our opponent is offering his hand in resignation. Well played, sir.

gofer: Black would like to play Bxe4, but has no time as white is threatening Qxg7#, so the mate threat needs to be dealt with first.

41 ... g5

Now the mate threat is gone and black has created its own, 42 ... Qh4#!!! So white has no time to play Bxd5. So how to deal with the mate threat and try not to lose Be4!?

42 fxg6(ep) Be6+ winning the queen

42 Qg3/Qg4 Bxe4 winning the bishop and if white exchanges queens on f4 then black will get 3 connected passed pawns! and if white doesn't exchange queens then Rd3+ is coming, so it really is game over.

This is a bit easy for a Wednesday... ...roll on Thursday. Time to check...

CHESSTTCAMPS: Black, on the move, has a two pawn lead and a pawn shelter for his king. However, white has a serious double attack that appears to win a piece, threatening 42.Qxg7# and 42.Bxd5. The first move that occurred to me on seeing this position was 41...Qxf5+(??), to get another pawn for the piece, but it became evident that this is not necessary. Back to basics: defend the attacked square, block the attacking piece, or make a compelling counter threat.

41... g5!!

... and if you can do all three with one move, that's probably the solution! Now black has two threats, 42...Qh4# and B(or Q)xe4. White's position is resignable, but he might try 42.fxg6 Bxe4 43.g7+ Kg8 and white has no good defense to the threat of 44...Bf5+ followed by 45... Rd2.

Willber G: <Ratt Boy: Kinda funny, that Black didn't play it at his first opportunity. In the same position (Move 39), he played ...Qe3+. Repetition got him back, and then inspiration apparently struck.>

zb2cr: 41. ... g5 does the trick. After the <en passant> capture 42. fxg6, Be6+ forces White to interpose his Bishop with 43. Bf5. Black then wins the Bishop with 43. ... Bxf5+, and White must sacrifice his Queen for nothing with 44. Qg4, Bxg4+. Now, if 45. Rxg4, Rd3+! If 46. Kh4, Qh2#, and 46. Rg3, Qxg3#, so White would have to abandon his Rook.

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